


Real or not real?

by Everlarked



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Book 3: Mockingjay, F/M, Mockingjay Spoilers, POV Peeta Mellark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-02
Updated: 2014-05-02
Packaged: 2018-01-21 15:01:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1554551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Everlarked/pseuds/Everlarked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is Peeta's POV of the end of Mockingjay. It starts right after they've been chased by the mutts and Katniss destroyed the holo. Peeta refuses to go on and Katniss kisses him. Lots of Everlark!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Real or not real?

Insanity is what I feel inside me. She will have to kill me, there is no other way. I look up expecting her to grasp her bow and end it. This is it, I think, the girl on fire, this is the end.   
And it is not a bad way to die. It was what I intended in the first games anyway. Her arrow in my heart. Just when I thought I’d feel the arrow pierce my heart I feel something else instead. It’s her lips, on my mouth. She presses them really hard and I start shuddering. I feel her warmth through my body and it reminds me of something good in the past, although I can’t seem to get a hold on it. I do, I need you.  
I’m trying to grasp the memory when she clasps my wrists.   
“Don’t let him take you from me.”  
I’m panting and feel the flashbacks of torture coming to me. “No, I don’t want to...”   
But she doesn’t let me finish. “Stay with me.” This triggers another memory and I know the answer. “Always.”   
Katniss helps me up and we move again. She didn’t kill me, why not? Why am I still alive, I’m a threat, a big threat.

After we arrived in Tigris basement, I find myself awake and thirsty, my handcuffs tie my hands above my head, no way to get out of this position. I turn my head and see Gale’s awake. “Water?” I ask and he gets me some.   
”Thanks for the water” I say after I quenched my thirst.   
“No problem, I wake up ten times a night anyway” he replies.  
We talk a little about Katniss and he tells me she never kissed him like she kissed me in the arena. I think about that and recall the kiss from just a few hours ago. I do, I need you. I remember it now, it was right after I gave her the locket. She told me she needed me and kissed me. It felt real, but was it real? I don’t know, I’m so confused and I feel the nightmares coming at me again.  
We have to get out of the basement the next day. Things are turning wild in the Capitol. I feel drowsy, like I’m on drugs. Katniss’s telling me the party will split up and I’m to stay here. I know she has to do this, but it hurts me. She’s going to leave me behind, she takes off with Gale. I decide I won’t stay in this basement alone, I’ll go crazy. Gale offers me his nightlock, I’m happy to take it and actually tempted to eat it immediately. But something stops me and I put the suicide pill away. I decide to go outside as well, out of this basement into the Capitol. We all dress up like Capitol people, we look ridiculous. Never underestimate a good stylist.  
Just before she leaves she turns to me and opens my cuffs. I look in her eyes and see desperation in them. I wonder why. Doesn’t she want to leave me? She wraps her arms around my neck and I feel her warmth against my body. This is it, then, really the end for us now, I think. 

After she’s gone I stay for a minute to get a hold of things. Then I remember my deal with Haymitch. We keep her alive. So I pull myself together and step out of the shop. The streets are a mess. People fleeing everywhere. Pods get activated. I saw Katniss and Gale at the corner a moment ago but they’re gone now and I feel the panic and insanity creep up on me again. What to do, where to go? I decide to go the presidents mansion, that’s where she is headed. If I go there I might be of use to her before I die.   
I arrive there somehow without any problems and am shocked at my sight. Children, huddled together on a concrete barricade. Guarded by peacekeepers. What is going on? A hovercraft materializes and sends silver parachutes to the children. I immediately recognize them from the games. But then the parachutes explode and the children are ripped apart. On my left I see people in white uniforms to come to the rescue of the children.   
Then all of a sudden I hear her voice, screaming, “Prim!”   
Flashback again to the reaping, where she screamed out her sisters name when she was drawn. I see her now, looking bewildered, with still some Capitol clothing on her, running towards her sister. I feel there is something wrong here, I start to run in her direction and shout out her name. “Katniss, no!” She doesn’t see me, but I catch her at the moment the bombs explode. We both get flown in the air and I see the fire around me and feel it burning my skin. Then I black out.  
In the burn unit I come back to my senses. When I open my eyes I see Haymitch in the chair next to my bed, drinking his white liquor. He tells me Katniss made it, but Prim died. He tells me Katniss has sunk in a deep depression and refuses to talk. I’m not allowed to see her. I drift back into a nightmarish reality. I can’t tell what is real and what’s not. Every time I regain consciousness I know she’s gone. I’m thinking of a way to kill myself so I can join her. Are you, are you coming to the tree.  
The song plays in my head and it makes me snap back to the real world and I sigh of relief when I realize she’s still alive.

Days go by and I start to feel better again. On the day of Snows execution I find myself in a room with president Coin, Annie, Beetee, Johanna, Enobaria and Haymitch. I don’t know why we are here. Then the door opens and Katniss enters. I feel very aware of her presence and don’t know what to do with myself so I look away. While the others talk about I don’t know what I look at her. She looks terrible, but she’s alive. I can’t help the strong feeling of relief. Keep Katniss alive, plan succeeded. And now?  
Then I hear president Coin suggesting another hunger games and I snap back in reality.   
“Are you joking?” I ask.   
But I realize she means it. We, the surviving victors have to vote about whether there should be a last episode of the hunger games, with capitol children.   
I burst out “No, I vote no, of course! We can’t have another hunger games.”   
I scream at the others. I don’t understand what’s happening here. Johanna and Enobaria vote yes, Annie and Beetee vote no. What is this? I look at Katniss and am startled by the expression on her face. She’s thinking hard, trying to resolve a puzzle and I see her struggle and resolve it. What is going on in her mind?   
Then I hear her say “I vote yes . . . for Prim.”   
I can’t believe what I’m hearing and I snap at Haymitch. But he’s looking at her and I see they come to some sort of understanding.   
“I’m with the Mockingjay.” He says.   
That is that, new hunger games, I am so overthrown by the idea I sit frozen in my chair for a while. When I look up, Katniss already left. It’s time for Snows execution.

I’m still working on that look Katniss and Haymitch shared. They are up to something. For Prim, what does she mean with that? Suddenly it hits me, the parachutes, the bombing, the hovercraft, me sent to the capitol to kill her off. These things weren’t done by Snow, but by President Coin. Coin was eventually the one who killed Prim. Katniss meant to tell Haymitch that. She doesn’t want hunger games, I know her. She just wants revenge. And now I’ve figured that out, I know what she’s going to do. I have to stop her before they kill her. I’m racing to the terrace where I see her, she’s raised her bow, the arrow pointed at Snows heart. I try to reach her but I see it happening. The point of her arrow shifts upward. President Coin collapses over the side of the balcony and plunges to the ground. Dead.   
While everyone is in an uproar I run to Katniss. I hear her whisper something and she twists her neck to reach the nightlock, which is hidden in a small pocket on the shoulder of her Mockingjay suit. I reach forward and put my hand on her shoulder just in time. Bitemarks in my hand, the blood drips, but I don’t mind. I won’t let her die.   
“Let me go!” she shouts at me.   
“I can’t.” I say.   
And then guards take her away from me. She starts screaming for Gale. It hurts me again, but I understand why she’s calling out to him. She wants him to kill her. My eyes go rapidly through the people to relocate him. He cannot kill her, I have to stop him if he tries. Then I see him standing just a few metres away from me. His hand on his bow. He’s looking at her and then turns his head to me. I see pain in his eyes, and anger.   
He takes one step in my direction and I hear him say, “she’s all yours.”   
Then he turns and walks away. I don’t understand his remark. What has happened between them? Something is broken, that much is certain. 

Katniss gets locked up in the training center where we stayed before the hunger games. On our own floor, in her own room. The room where we slept together the last few nights before the second games. I realize I don’t know what to do with myself, where to go. She is imprisoned, I have no duties. The only thing I have to do is talk with dr. Aurelius about my nightmares and mental condition. I talk to him about what happened at the vote for the hunger games and explained my theory on why Katniss shot president Coin. After a while I look at him and see the wonder in his eyes. “What?” I ask.   
“You are improving a lot,” he says, “there is no edge in your voice, your eyes are clear while you are talking about her. I can hear from what you’re saying that you love her, trying to figure her out but also want to protect her.”   
This comment takes me by surprise, I think it through and realize he is right. I love her, have loved her for a long, long time now. There is nothing mutt or insane about it. I know she is a hard one to figure out, I know she has a special bond with Gale, kissed him even. But that doesn’t change the fact that I love her. I go in search for Haymitch, who is assigned in an apartment in the presidents mansion. I am actually still hospitalized, no house has been assigned to me yet, due to my insanity. When I find him, he’s drunk as usual, but able to talk. Which is good, because I need to do the “real or not real” method to find out what is real and what is in my head.   
I ask him, “Haymitch, I loved Katniss from the first moment we met, real or not real?”   
He looks at me like I’m talking in a language he doesn’t understand, but then finally replies, “Real, the day you met her in school, you told her that in the cave.”   
I nod, and ask my second question. “She killed Coin to revenge her sister, real or not real?”   
Now Haymitch looks up and I see a stirring in his eyes, a warning. “Real, but that is something that stays between you and me.”   
His voice sounds stern. I nod again. Probably best that no one else knows about this.   
My last question “You two didn’t want the hunger games back, real or not real?”   
And he answers, “Real.”   
I’m sighing in relief. “I knew it,” I say, and then add, “we have to make sure they don’t execute her.” Haymitch stares at me for a while and says “I know, we have to play the insanity card. You think it will work?”   
He is right, insanity must do the trick and I do think it will work. “Well, the way she was behaving the last couple of weeks, after the parachutes exploded, everyone knew she was mentally disoriented” I say.   
“Yeah, like you” he replies. I shrug.  
We get together with Plutarch Heavensbee and plan out a strategy for the trial. We all witness, as is dr. Aurelius. I’m sure they will believe us, even though I know she shot the president on purpose. Plutarch Heavensbee acts like it is all a game to him. I don’t care, as long as his purpose is to get Katniss out.  
I’m allowed to see her, only through some glass wall. She can’t see me through it. The sight of her startles me. She looks so small and hurt. Her body still covered with the burns. Then suddenly she starts to sing in a sweet voice. I recall her singing in front of the class, the first day at school, the valley song. The mockingjays fell silent because of it. Here are no mockingjays around, but if there would, they’d fell silent again. Beautiful.   
The trial lasts for a couple of days. People are interrogated. Katniss’s mother cries when it’s her turn. But she does make the judges believe Katniss’s state of insanity. Dr. Aurelius is the most convincing witness. He draws a picture of a mentally disabled, insane little girl. Not to be held accountable for her deeds. And the judges rule her not guilty, incompetent. I haven’t felt happier in a long time. Then comes the bad news. She’s to be sent back to 12, with Haymitch as her mentor. Immediately. I don’t even have a chance to see her, to say something to her, to say goodbye. 

The next couple of weeks are almost unbearable for me. I plead dr. Aurelius to let me go, but he’s still not convinced I won’t go mutt. I don’t hear from Haymitch, but I get a call from Greasy Sae, she tells me Katniss is living in some state of numbness, but she hasn’t attempted suicide.   
“It’s like she is waiting for something” says Greasy Sae, “And I think it is you, she’s waiting for.”   
This comment gives me a spark of hope although I have no idea what Greasy Sae is basing this on. But I’m still tied to the Capitol. In the times doing nothing I start to paint again. I paint Katniss, the girl on fire. It takes me a couple of days, but at the end she is beautiful. She’s wearing the wedding dress Cinna made her, she has the bow, ready to shoot. But her eyes are the eyes that looked at me in the cave, on the train, on the beach. With such a soft glow in them. I show it to dr. Aurelius and he looks at the painting in wonder.   
“It is amazing, beautiful” he says and to my amazement signs the papers for my release.   
I immediately take the first hovercraft with soldiers heading up to 12 and in a day I find myself standing in Victor’s Village again. It is too early in the morning for anyone to be awake yet. After thinking for a while what to do, I get a wheelbarrow and go off to the woods with a shovel. I dig up five bushes of primrose, put them in the wheelbarrow and head back to the victor’s village. I start digging up the earth under de windows of the living room. She appears behind me and I lift my head. She looks so fragile, so thin.   
“You’re back,” she says.   
I explain dr. Aurelius wouldn’t let me leave the Capitol until yesterday. I see her eyes examining me, I wonder if she’s happy to see me or not, I can’t figure it out by the look in her eyes.   
She asks, “What are you doing?”  
“I went to the woods this morning and dug these up. For her, I thought we could plant them along side of the house.” I say.   
She looks at me bewildered, I see emotions of anger and pain conflicting in her face. Then she nods and runs. I don’t know what to make of it. Dr. Aurelius told me to take it easy with her. She is deeply depressed and I shouldn’t force her into doing anything. So after I planted the primrose, I decide to call it a day, even though it is still morning. I go to my own house, bake bread and go to bed and sleep. 

In my dreams I hear Katniss screaming her head off, she turns into a mutt and turns back into her old self, then into a mockingjay and she flies away.   
“Don’t go, stay with me” I scream at her, but she’s already out of my reach.   
Then I hear her screaming and I wake up. The screaming doesn’t end and I look around me, bewildered. Where is she? Where am I? Have they taken her finally and are they killing her now? I come back to myself as I see I’m in my own room. But the screaming still hasn’t stopped and I realize she is actually screaming. Before I know it I’m down the stairs and standing at her front door, wanting to crush in and hold her. But dr. Aurelius warning stops me. I sink down, my back against the door and cover my ears to block her screaming. It doesn’t seem to help though. I see her before me now, with the jabberjays flying over her head, Finnick next to her, covering his ears. I realize I’m flashed back in the second games, at the jabberjay attack. I can’t reach her, there is an invisible wall between us. I start weeping and rocking my body. It seems to last for hours but then I hear nothing, all fell silent. I find myself again at the front door of Katniss’s house. I get up and open the door and walk in silently. She seems to have lost consciousness. I gently lift her and carry her to her bed. She’s so light, it’s like a bag of feathers. I sit in the chair next to her bed and look at her. For hours I’m staring at her face, caressing her hair. When dawn breaks I get up, go home and bake bread. Baking bread is my way of dealing with things, just as Katniss’s way is hunting. I see Greasy Sae coming to the village and I take the bread and join her. Katniss is sitting in a chair by the fire. Her eyes red from crying. But she gets up and goes to the table. Prims cat, the one I saw this night when I brought her to bed, is sitting on the floor. Greasy Sae makes us breakfast. Katniss feeds all her bacon to the cat, it makes me smile, because I remember her shouting at the animal and telling me she hated him, but now he’s a reminder to her sister and therefore precious.  
I look at her and am thinking about what I’m supposed to do now. I have no idea. Katniss seems to be back in some catatonic state after breakfast. She sits in the chair, staring in the fire. As I am thinking about leaving I hear her whisper, “Don’t go.”   
I turn around and look at her. She’s still staring in the fire and I’m not sure if I imagined her saying it. But I take my chances and answer, “I won’t.”   
Then I take the other rocker and sit next to her. We just sit there, in silence.  
This night, after she dozed off in the chair, I bring her to bed again and sit in the chair next to it. I’m still not sure on what to do, but finally fatigue takes over and I fall asleep in the chair, with my head on the bed. A whisper wakes me in the morning. “Stay with me.” I lift my head and look her in the eyes. She strikes my hair softly. “Always.” I say.   
The next night, when I bring her to bed she pulls me in the bed. I close my arms around her and feel an enormous weight removed from my shoulders. I hardly get any sleep though, because she wakes up three times in tears from the nightmares. It doesn’t matter, we’re here, together.   
Katniss tells me about the book she wants to make, in honour of fallen tributes. We start working on it. I paint, make sketches. Katniss writes the memories down. Prim, my father, Rue, Finnick. The book fills itself slowly. We seal the pages with salt water and promises to live a happy life. Even Haymitch joins us sometimes to add to the book. It’s good to be with the three of us, it feels like we’re a family, a family of victors.  
Katniss and I grow back together. Eventhough she still has nightmares from mutts and lost children. And sometimes I get overthrown by flashbacks from the games and the torture. I’m sketching the avox girl, Lavinia, as I see her come alive in front of me and turn into a mutt. I freeze and clasp the sides of the chair. I hear Katniss’s voice in the distant. But the avox is closing in on me. Just as she’s about to rip my head off, I feel Katniss’s lips pressed against mine. I come back to the present and look at her in wonder.   
“Come back to me,” she whispers. Then I realize what just happened.   
“You kissed me” I say. She smiles and I get up and take her in my arms and kiss her back. I feel her body react to mine as we stand there in the middle of the room. Tasting each other’s tears and the saltiness make me realize we’re both crying as we kiss. I feel that I’m closer to her than ever.   
When we finally let go of each other and wipe each other’s tears away, I whisper, “You love me. Real or not real?”   
She tells me, “Real.”

 


End file.
